Linux for SGI Visual Workstations
Linux 2.2.10 + Red Hat 6.0

NOTE: These instructions need to be updated.

Updated: July 28, 1999

Step 1: Pre-install preparation, those floppies...

On any capable computer grab the following files from this website.

Windows Downloading

If you're downloading from a DOS or Windows system please consult the "dosutils" subdirectory of the Red Hat 6.0 CD. There are DOS executibles and documentation available there on subjects such as writing to a "raw" floppy.

Also, be careful when handling text files under Windows. Certain ways of moving text (ASCII) files can cause ^M's to be inserted along with newlines already there. In that environment it might be best to NOT extract the tar image below (for Floppy #4) -- instead transfer it directly to a floppy and untar it under Linux during the install procedure.

NOTE: it appears that at least one version of Netscape Navigator inserts ^M's in even the binary kernel file. MAKE CERTAIN the downloaded file is the size advertised on the web page! (On a particular NT machine I tried Internet Explorer which did THE RIGHT THING).

Floppy #1

Download these 2 files and put them on your first (FAT format) floppy:

Floppy #2

Download this special file system image and copy it onto your second floppy.

NOTE: This is NOT a FAT format floppy -- you won't be able to mount it and cd there and look at it in that manner. By "raw" we mean that the floppy is just being used as 1.4MB of arbitrary data storage. Think of this as a single file directly on the raw floppy.

In Unix terms "copy it" means doing something like "cp initrd.img /dev/fd0" or "dd if=initrd.img of=/dev/fd0" ("/dev/fd0" is often the floppy drive on a Linux computer, your mileage may vary).

This is the initrd.img from _inside_ RH60/images/boot.img. This was extracted from there by first dd'ing boot.img raw to a floppy, mounting it -- it's VFAT -- and then copying initrd.img out of there. initrd.img is a gzip'ed ext2fs file system image for use as a ramdisk root file system. (The kernel knows how to gunzip the file system image from the floppy into ram. This is just the normal Linux ramdisk code).

Floppy #3

Download this other special file system image and copy it raw to your third floppy.

This is simply RH60/images/rescue.img which is yet another gzip'ed ext2fs file system image for use as a ramdisk root.

Floppy #4

Download this gzip'ed tar image, and put it on your fourth FAT floppy. (Do NOT extract the tar image at this point).

This tar image includes these 5 files. Here is the output of "tar zvtf f4jul28.tgz":

drwxrwxr-x bh/bh             0 1999-07-28 09:31 f4/
-rw-r--r-- bh/bh          1201 1999-06-07 10:51 f4/XF86Config.crt
-rwxr-xr-x bh/bh          1204 1999-06-07 10:51 f4/XF86Config.fp
-rwxr-xr-x bh/bh         46638 1999-07-21 08:17 f4/arclx.exe
-rw-r--r-- bh/bh           353 1999-06-07 10:51 f4/fb.modes
-rwxr-xr-x bh/bh       1359183 1999-07-28 09:31 f4/la2210.vw

And, here is the output of sum on those files:

02731     2 XF86Config.crt
33834     2 XF86Config.fp
35939    46 arclx.exe
32499     1 fb.modes
61979  1328 la2210.vw

NOTE: The kernel is a uniprocesser kernel. It will run fine on a multiprocessor machine, but only on one of its cpus. This is simply a kernel config option; you have the opportunity later to configure and compile your own kernel in a later step.

Write-protect the floppies

No part of the actual install procedure requires write-access to any of the floppies. So... it might be wise to slide the write protect tab to the locked position on each floppy.

Bonk here to start the actual installation of Red Hat 6.0 directly onto your Visual Workstation.